Dcfs Renews Contracts After Cleanup

SPRINGFIELD — Only months after discovering filthy living conditions at two residential centers for troubled children, the state renewed more than $8 million in contracts to their operators.

Confidential reviews last year of the Kingwood Hospital in Michigan City, Ind., and the Mexican Community Committee's residential treatment center on Chicago's Southeast Side raised serious questions about the care provided to 91 abused and neglected state wards who needed psychological treatment.

But officials of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services, which renewed the contracts despite finding the problems, said both centers have made significant improvements since. DCFS credited the reviews with forcing the centers to correct problems.

Yet DCFS acknowledged that the centers, even under the best conditions, were inappropriate for some of the more seriously troubled youths. The agency has since reduced the number of children placed in both.

Independent reviews by Ronald Davidson, director of the mental health policy program at the University of Illinois at Chicago, found unsanitary living conditions at both sites, with residential units filthy and decorated with obscene graffiti.

At Kingwood, children seemed "out of control" due to a lack of staff, Davidson reported. At the Mexican Community Committee center, mice and roaches infested the building, and one of two fire-exit doors had been jammed shut deliberately.

Davidson's review of Kingwood concluded that DCFS wards "may be at serious risk of harm." His review of the Mexican Community Committee center urged DCFS to tighten its licensing to ensure that state approval "is never again granted to a program so thoroughly unprepared to care for children."

Yet six months after the April 26 review of Kingwood, DCFS awarded the hospital owner, Charter Behavioral Health Systems, contracts totaling $7.2 million. And eight months after the Jan. 25 review of the Mexican Community Committee's facility, DCFS awarded it $1.25 million in contracts.

Jerry Slomka, a DCFS deputy director, said the operators actually will receive less because the state has reduced the number of children to 24 from 63 at Kingwood and to 18 from 28 at the Mexican Community Committee center.

Slomka also said Davidson's reviews prompted quick improvements at both centers.

At Kingwood, Davidson found the hospital's adolescent unit and children's unit covered in "obscene graffiti and gang signs." Parts of the units smelled of urine, and written records and interviews with staffers "indicated that inadequate staffing levels have contributed to patient injuries, patient sexual assaults and staff injuries."

At the Mexican Community Committee's treatment center, Davidson wrote that he observed "filthy living units, toxic substances under bathroom sinks in each living unit and dirty refrigerators containing "outdated cartons of eggs and moldy food."

He also found a jammed fire-exit door with its hinges unscrewed from the door frame. The door was one of two marked fire escapes. Davidson wrote that a worker called in to fix the door said administrators "had previously told him that they could not afford to repair it `because there was no money.' "

Davidson said Thursday that he has been equally critical of DCFS and of the agency's providers.

"This is exactly what (DCFS Director) Jess McDonald wanted me to do: to find problems and fix them, and I think we have successfully done that," he said.